Cancer Protein Heals Damaged Cord Cells

Researchers said this week they have found a protein linked to cancer that helps heal damaged spinal cord and brain cells.

A team at Columbia University Medical Center said the have found that the protein — known as Id protein and abundant in cancers like brain and breast cancers and pediatric tumors — also appears to help neurons regenerate, which may provide a key to treating spinal-cord injuries or neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Our finding suggests that the same process this protein uses for proliferating cancer could also potentially be used to regrow axons that are damaged in spinal cord injuries or neurological diseases, said Antonio Iavarone, associate professor of neurology and pathology at Columbia University Medical Center’s Institute for Cancer Genetics, and the study’s lead author.

The researchers said the discovery also has implications for treating cancer. They observed that an enzyme inside normal cells — known as APC — typically degrades Id proteins soon after they’re produced, but cancer cells contain a very high level of these proteins.

Thus, by re-introducing the APC enzyme into cancer cells, the enzyme might eliminate the proteins and stop tumor cell growth, a theory the team said it will next address.

The findings appear in the journal Nature this week on the journal’s Web site.